To date, no satisfactory account of the connection between natural-scientific and historical
explanation has been given, and philosophers seem to have largely given up on the problem.
This paper is an attempt to resolve this old issue and to sort out and clarify some areas of historical
explanation by developing and applying a method that will be called “pragmatic explication”
involving the construction of definitions that are justified on pragmatic grounds.
Explanations in general can be divided into “dynamic” and “static” explanations, which are
those that essentially require relations across time and those that do not, respectively. The
problem of assimilating historical explanations concerns dynamic explanation, so a general
analysis of dynamic explanation that captures both the structure of natural-scientific and
historical explanation is offered. This is done in three stages: In the first stage, pragmatic
explication is introduced and compared to other philosophical methods of explication. In
the second stage pragmatic explication is used to tie together a series of definitions that are
introduced in order to establish an account of explanation. This involves an investigation of
the conditions that play the role in historiography that laws and statistical regularities play
in the natural sciences. The essay argues that in the natural sciences, as well as in history,
the model of explanation presented represents the aims and overarching structure of actual
causal explanations offered in those disciplines. In the third stage the system arrived at in the
preceding stage is filled in with conditions available to and relevant for historical inquiry.
Further, the nature and treatment of causes in history and everyday life are explored and
related to the system being proposed. This in turn makes room for a view connecting aspects
of historical explanation and what we generally take to be causal relations.